Better Britons : reproduction, national identity, and the afterlife of empire /
"In 1932, Aldous Huxley published Brave New World, his famous novel about a future in which humans are produced to spec in laboratories. Around the same time, Australian legislators announced an ambitious experiment to "breed the colour" out of Australia by procuring white husbands fo...
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Main Authors: | |
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Published: |
University of Toronto Press,
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Publisher Address: | Toronto ; Buffalo ; London : |
Publication Dates: | 2014. |
Literature type: | Book |
Language: | English |
Subjects: | |
Summary: |
"In 1932, Aldous Huxley published Brave New World, his famous novel about a future in which humans are produced to spec in laboratories. Around the same time, Australian legislators announced an ambitious experiment to "breed the colour" out of Australia by procuring white husbands for women of white and indigenous descent. In this study, Nadine Attewell reflects on an assumption central to these and other policy initiatives and cultural texts from twentieth-century Britain, Australia, and New Zealand: that the fortunes of the nation depend on controlling the reproductive choices of citizen-subjects. Better Britons charts an innovative approach to the politics of reproduction by reading an array of works and discourses - from canonical modernist novels and speculative fictions to government memoranda and public debates - that reflect on the significance of reproductive behaviours for civic, national, and racial identities. Bringing insights from feminist and queer theory into dialogue with work in indigenous studies, Attewell sheds new light on changing conceptions of British and settler identity during the era of decolonization."--Pub. desc. |
Item Description: | Donation. |
Carrier Form: | xi, 324 pages : portraits ; 24 cm |
Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 213-299) and index. |
ISBN: |
9781442647022 1442647027 |
Index Number: | HQ766 |
CLC: | C955 |
Call Number: | C955/A884 |
Contents: |
Introduction -- Beginnings -- An Island Solution: Utopian Forms and the Routing of National Identity -- Whiteness for Beginners: An Australian Experiment -- Endings -- "I kept on dreaming about the sea": Foreclosure and the Aborting Woman -- Apprehending Loss: Maternity at the Margins -- Shrunk in the (White)wash: Britain at World's end -- Envoi. |